By David Kirton
SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) -Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies unveiled its Mate 70 smartphone series on Tuesday, bolstering its premium smartphone comeback while showcasing its own operating system that looks to cleanly break away from U.S. technology.
The Mate 70 is the successor to the Mate 60 series released in August last year, widely seen as marking Huawei's comeback to high-end smartphones in competition with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) after its business was badly hit by U.S. export curbs.
Its launch comes as the U.S. is expected to announce new export controls that could add up to 200 Chinese chip companies to a trade blacklist as soon as this week, restricting their access to U.S. suppliers, Reuters reported on Saturday.
The device is "the most powerful Mate phone ever", Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei's consumer business group, said at an event in the company's hometown of Shenzhen that was livestreamed online and at its stores.
Mate 70 prices will start at 5,499 yuan ($758), Yu said. Apple's base iPhone 16 model sells for 5,999 yuan in China.
Yu also said the Mate 70 is the first mainstream smartphone to include a satellite paging system, has an improved processor, and runs on Huawei's own HarmonyOS NEXT operating system, which together boost performance by 40% compared to previous models.
The Mate 70 series is the first major commercial rollout of the HarmonyOS NEXT, a significant step in Huawei's push for software independence since U.S. curbs cut off its access to Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) services in 2019.
HarmonyOS NEXT is the Android-free version of Huawei's operating system that began testing this year, marking a complete departure from Android code as the company seeks to eliminate its reliance on U.S. technology.
Last week, Huawei said it had secured more than 15,000 applications for its HarmonyOS ecosystem, with plans to expand to 100,000 apps in the coming months.
Still, Huawei is keeping its options open, offering Android compatibility as a backup solution. The strategy suggests the company may need more time to prepare HarmonyOS NEXT for full public deployment while building its developer ecosystem.
Richard Yu said the Mate 70 series will offer users a choice between HarmonyOS 4.3, which maintains Android compatibility, and the new HarmonyOS NEXT 5.0.
All new Huawei phones and tablets launching next year will run the Android-free version, Yu added.
IMPROVED CHIP
Teardown analyses revealed both the Mate 60 and the Pura 70 series - launched in April - feature advanced chips manufactured by SMIC, underscoring the country's growing semiconductor capabilities despite Western export controls.
Huawei however has not confirmed this. It does not typically discuss its chip advancements at product launch events, with improvements usually discovered by teardown firms later.
At least some versions of the Mate 70 will use Huawei’s Kirin 9100 chipset made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), though production challenges may restrict them to higher end models, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the chip.
The patriotic sentiment surrounding Huawei's technological breakthrough has helped fuel its market recovery and intensified competition with other players, including iPhone maker Apple, in China - the world's largest smartphone market.
Huawei was ranked as China's No.2 smartphone vendor in the third quarter of 2024, with deliveries exceeding 10 million units for the fourth straight quarter, according to research firm Canalys.
This is a significant rebound from the second quarter of 2022, when it shipped just 4.1 million units.
Research firm Counterpoint said it expects shipments of the Mate 70 series to exceed 10 million.
($1 = 7.2586 Chinese yuan renminbi)